Conversations with Angels
by technical-direction
Summary: Lawrence Kutner faces the afterlife, one angel at a time.
1. Amber

_**Amber**_

There was no way on Earth that Heaven could really look the way it appeared to Lawrence Kutner. At first, it looked to him like a small white room, but upon further inspection, he realized that the area was in fact a bus. It had been a while since he'd ridden a bus, but the balance poles and seats made it obvious. It was empty on the side he was facing, so he turned around and looked for other dead people. He was alone, feeling inquisitive, and the bus was not in motion. There were windows that the man could not see out of. There was not feeling of moving. He wondered if this was all death was. He wondered if other people that had died were given their own little white buses. Or was it Limbo? He wondered if he would be there for eternity or if something climactic would happen.

Lawrence knew something about climactic. And he knew a whole hell of a lot more about anti-climactic. He knew what it felt like to know that it was all coming down to one action that he would either perform or back down. And Lawrence had not backed down.

"What were you expecting?" He heard. He turned to look for the origin of the voice, but he saw nothing. "What are you looking for?" The voice responded. It was a woman, her voice sugary sweet and familiar. He'd known the voice.

"I'm looking for you." He spoke back to the voice, expecting a quick answer.

There was a pause.

"Are you God?" He prompted. He'd never believed in God, but if there really was one, then sucking up couldn't hurt his case.

"No." The voice answered. It was coming from behind him this time, and he turned to see a well-known face attached to a body that was sitting comfortably in one of the seats. The placid face of the woman was having a soothing feeling on him, and though he'd just been nervous, he was now feeling well enough to take the seat beside her. She continued to face forward as if his presence was expected. "You remember me, right?" She asked.

_This is a dream_, he thought.

"Yes." He assured. "It was sort of hard to forget."

She chuckled a little, her voice still not as mean as he'd remembered. "You were a doctor. You dealt with deaths all the time."

"But you were also a friend." He defended.

There was another pause.

"I know what you did." She said.

"Yeah?"

"There was a clock over your head, and I watched it run out." The woman finally looked at him. "It's a hobby of mine, I suspect."

"That's morbid." Lawrence stated. "You just watch people die from up here?"

"Well, there's only so much I can do about it now." Her voice sounded wistful, and Lawrence wondered for a moment why he cared. She'd been a good doctor. Maybe she was a little condescending, and maybe a lot of a bitch, but she did her job well.

"I bet you miss that." He said. It was no attempt at comfort. It was the desire not to be silent.

She sighed, and then followed up with a small grin. "Sometimes"

He wanted to ask if she would have wanted to stop him. He hadn't wanted to be stopped. He'd asked himself if that was all he really wanted, and the answer had been no. That's why he didn't look for help; that was the reason he didn't tell anyone. It hurt to think of all the people he inadvertently would hurt with his actions. He didn't want to be that guy… but he was. "How long ago was it?"

"About a minute ago." The woman said without feeling.

"I barely remember it."

"Isn't it better that way?"

"I think so. Can you remember when you died?" Lawrence studied how his fingers worked. It was the same as always. His movements seemed as fluid as they had always been.

"I remember Wilson. What do you remember?"

"I remember the gun."

There was a pause. "Is this heaven?"

"If this was heaven, where did I come from?"

"I don't know. You tell me. I just got here."

"And do you think someone that killed himself would deserve to go to Heaven?"

"If you want to get technical, you killed yourself, too." Lawrence replied at rocket speed. He was shocked by the innate feeling to defend his decision. He knew it wasn't right. He knew there were other ways. He'd made a point to be rational.

"I hadn't meant to, though." She defended, he voice nonetheless even. "My death was an accident, and yours intentional. If you didn't know, that counts for something."

Pause.

"What's going to happen to me now?"

"What does it matter? You think it's a dream. You think you failed and it's a dream from a coma."

"Is it? I can't tell the difference." He tried to laugh, but it came out sounding less happy that it had when he imagined it in his mind. "I've never been dead before."

"Do you want to see? Or would you rather I just told you?"

Lawrence thought. "You just tell me. If I'd wanted to see, I would have stood in front of a mirror."

The grace of the figure beside him overtook the presence on the bus. It seemed a light had transformed the luminescent place into something impossibly radiant in comparison. She was not moving. She was calm, as if she couldn't even see the light. "You died. I told you the clock ran out. This isn't a dream. This isn't real life. You are dead." She stopped and locked eyes with the figure that could no longer be considered a man. "That's what you wanted isn't it?" With her speech, her tongue stopped curtly on the T's in her sentences.

"I think so. I don't have much of a choice now, do I?"

The other figure leaned over and squeezed Lawrence's hand. "This is going to get harder, Kutner. Get ready for it." The light was gone, then.

Kutner was alone. There was no one to explain it to him. There was no one to tell him death wasn't so painful after all. He'd thought it would be the end. He'd thought that death would bring him peace, and apparently, with her leaving words, Amber had proved him wrong.


	2. Malachim

_**Malachim**_

"You want to know." A voice began again, this one more measured and colder. It was not menacing, but much deeper, much more articulate. "I can tell you."

"Then tell me." Lawrence replied, no longer afraid of the outcome. It had felt like an eternity since another voice had graced the bus. Kutner was tired of the bus. He had walked every surface of it. He had sat in every seat.

"Tell me why I should."

"Why would you offer if you won't?"

"I can only give you answers, not questions. I can ask you no questions. I need no answers. I am here only as an answer. That is my purpose. I am a messenger."

"Fine, then."

"I am obliged to only answer. Not to offer." The angel appeared before Lawrence, clothed in blue. There was the eye of a peacock feather pinned onto the lapel of the angel's suit coat. He stood strongly, with a matching jaw that was clenched when he was not speaking. The Dark gray of his hair made him look distinguished, and reminded the doctor of an old colleague that he'd admired in his life. The thought was reinforced by the blue of the messenger's eyes.

"What's your name?"

"I am known as a Malachim, not by a name."

"Do you wish you had a name?" Lawrence noted his skill at this game.

"No." The angel replied tersely.

Lawrence looked deeper into the rims of the angel's irises. "What's going to happen to me?"

"I only respond to questions with answers of which I am certain."

"Am I going to stay on this bus for the rest of eternity?"

"No."

"How do you become an angel?"

"I deserved my title by telling the truth."

"Did you ever tell a lie?"

"Yes."

Lawrence was curious to the nature of the lie, but he was more concerned with his future than the Malachim's personal life. "Can you tell lies now?"

"Yes."

"Will you tell me a lie?"

"No."

"That's a bonus." Kutner said, smiling for the first time since his death. The angel did not reply. It took a moment for Lawrence to realize it was because he was not bound to a statement. "I am not an angel, am I?"

"No." The Malachim replied.

"Does God exist?"

"That is not for me to decide for you."

"What?"

"That is not for me to decide for you."

"No, I mean, can you rephrase that?"

"I am not meant to make that decision for you."

The consistencies of the angel's argument were frustrating. Lawrence knew the option of losing his patience was very really happening. "Is this Heaven? Is this Hell? Am I in Limbo? What's going on here?"

The angel smirked at the cunning of his own joke. "No. No. No. You are waiting."

"Are you supposed to be helping me?" Lawrence asked, his voice rising and speech quickening.

"No." The angel answered. "I am leaving." He blinked and as fast as he had come, without the light Amber had left behind, he was absent.

Lawrence took another stab at waiting, and collapsed into the bus seat behind him. He took a disliking to the Malachim. _What was the point of that?_ He questioned, hoping, in vain, someone else would come to rescue him from the feeling of aloneness that he's been trying to escape with the bullet._ If I had known death would have been worse than living in a miserable life, I would have hesitated._


	3. HaMerkauah

_**HaMerkauah**_

_This is frustrating. This is horrible. _

"It's not so bad." Another voice called.

"Why does everyone know what I'm thinking?" Kutner shrieked. His voice was not high, but much more pained. He was starting to develop a headache.

A female angel appeared this time, with wings this time. They lingered lightly on her back and heels. It seemed like she's been there for awhile, as her posture was leaning the wrong way into a chair. On the tips of her ankles, there were smaller wings. The light shined through those and they shimmered.

"Are you the daughter of Apollo or something?" Lawrence asked, taken with her beauty. It had always been said that angels were beautiful, but as hard as he could have ever imagined, she was more striking.

She laughed, and her sound was like an earthly woman's sound. "No. I just exist. That's all I could ever ask for."

"Are you here to teach me some sort of lesson? Are you going to leave me here like the Malachim?"

The angel sat up straight. "You mean he already came? I thought I was going to be your first visitor." She paused and lost the disappointed expression that her face had worn. "I guess I have been pretty busy. My superior doesn't normally have time to give me, but I suppose I can't blame him. It isn't as if it's his fault."

"What's your name?" Kutner asked as he took a seat across from the angel. He was more taken with her than the Malachim, but he couldn't be sure if it was the admiration of her beauty or her kindness that made him soften.

She smiled, showing teeth that, while white, were grown in tightly together. Her canines were sharper than they should have been, a sign of a much different diet than modern men had ever eaten. "HaMerkauah, but it seems to me that most people of your time period have trouble pronouncing it. You are not obliged to speak my name in our conversation."

"I can say that." Kutner announced. "Who are you?"

The beautiful, silk-clothed angel stood and approached the man. She kneeled on her knees and touched his face, her eyes blank as if she wasn't looking at him. "You don't know who I am?" Her voice was small.

"No." He said.

"I was the chariot that brought you here."

"You're the angel of death?"

"No. He is my master. I am the one who brought you. He was the one who found you." Her gray eyes were imploring him to remember, but there was nothing that came to mind. He remembered nothing about his death. He just knew that he was dead. Or at least he was pretty sure.

Lawrence looked into the being's eyes, and he was calm, he felt whole again, without the pain his life had granted him before. He felt like now, he belonged, and this feeling that cascaded through the top of his cranium to the tip of his pinkie toe resembled happiness. It had been a long time since Lawrence could have truthfully said "fine" when he was asked how he was. He would have said it then if she had asked how we was feeling. "What are you here for?" He whispered.

He watched as her red lips moved to the sound of her voice. It was not a spectacular voice, but the humanness of it seemed to add to her grace. It was a foil with which to compare. "I am here of my own will to tell you that this is death. I am here to probe my own curiosity. I would have liked to have known you in life, Lawrence."

"Know me in death." He replied, his voice unconsciously mimicking the soft airy appeal of this angel's.

"It could have been possible to know you in life. You were so close. You could have just tried. You could have taken that leap of faith." Her sound covered over with a film that made Lawrence feel nauseous. Her hand quickly fell from his face, and the world began to grow colder.

He sat up. "I did take a leap of faith." He was suddenly furious. "I t_ook_ a leap of faith!"

HaMerkauah sighed. "But it was death."

"Did you just come here to rub it in my face?" Lawrence's face hardened. "If you're planning on actually doing something to help me, then do it!"

The angel's face hardened to the same point as his. "What could I have done?"

"Then, nothing?"

"You don't deserve anything, you selfish man!" The angel stood, and the wings on her ankles spread wide. "If you had deserved anymore than I gave you, I would have given it to you!"

"What the hell did you give me?" Lawrence demanded.

"I gave you peace!"

"No, you didn't! Does this look like peace?"

"I took you! The Angel of Death reaped life from you, and I kept it! I brought you from the misery that you called your life!" Her voice was tall, strong, and so much less delicate than it had been before. "I carried your soul through wars and tears and brought humanity to the human child that you were born, and you forfeited it, so I appeased you! What else could you expect? The kindness that I took to give that soul to you—the hells that I had to endure first—before I could gift you with a life! You deserve nothing more from me!"

Lawrence was quiet. He had loved the angel, and he now understood now. She had been the nurturer. She had planned out his life. HaMerkauah had given him the good times of his life, and even the bad, but she had lived it first.

"I have lived a thousand lives before. You were one of my sons. You are now another nothing." The angel hovered above the ground, and stared down at the figure that had now crouched on the floor below her.

"Forgive me." He asked, like a child that had asked for one too many toys in one store.

"Explain to me why I should."

He came up empty, but the words found his lips through gentle thought. "Because you are kind, and I am nothing. Because you love me and because I am looking for forgiveness in you."

Her eyes softened, as did her voice and words. "Then it will be, my son." She bent down and kissed his cheek before disintegrating right before his eyes.


End file.
